Special Day

Saturday, June 20, 2020 Summer Solstice

The year’s longest day begins slightly murky, but soon summertime light and warmth will arrive. While nodding to this, I’ll add that the past months have seemed a lifetime. Unquestionably, 2020 is the strangest year. Locally, it’s about our weather and how to stay safe while out and about. Alternatively, we’re aware vividly that nationally, everything social, political, and economic seems on-the-edge. Like Mr. Wiley Fox, in air above a bottomless chasm about to fall and his legs hard-pumping.

Something representing this day that’s actually cool is Stonehenge, the 5,000-year-old stone circle perched on an otherwise barren English hill. It’s a site spiritually significant to Britain’s approximately 50K worshipping pagans. At summer solstice, thousands of them gather there to worship. The massive stones, set in a circle by ancient miracles of human labor, are arranged so that on each longest day, the sun will rise directly behind a “heel stone”. In that single day, the miracle of ancient engineering will channel sunlight into and through the stone circle’s center. This year, Stonehenge is closed against worries about public health concerns, and instead, new age technology will provide live-streaming. We who’ve visited Stonehenge know it’s unlikely that remote access will satisfy true believers.

As to the summer solstice, I love longer hours of natural daylight. Today as usual I’ll tramp with my dogs in a forest or horseback ride near to home. For sure, abundant light delights, but I’m forced into a new reality, there’s too little of me to hike and ride in a single day.

Dear Friends: Happy Summer! Wear a mask, go outside, celebrate and have fun. Diana